“What’s that?” asked some journalist fellow, standing just outside the truck.
Feynman snorted, amused. “That was The Bomb.”
I glanced at my watch. Five thirty-one a.m., with the second hand just passing thirty.
What remained of the day was pandemonium, and well-earned.
We’d done it! All of us!
The years of labor, the horrid meals and the never-enough sleep, the thin mattresses on creaking wire! We’d overcome all exhaustion, dismay, and discouragement to produce this glorious feat, this magnificent engine which would now save the lives of tens of thousands of Our Boys in the Pacific.
The detonation of Trinity had rekindled us all, pumped the lifeblood of esprit de corps back into every last resident of Los Alamos.
We couldn’t congratulate one another heartily enough. Army men danced drunken jigs with physicists. Comely secretaries do-si-doed with apple-cheeked calculator girls. Chemists clapped engineers on the back and were nearly knocked down by their brethren’s returned clouts of joyous camaraderie.
Even Oppenheimer, who had lately come to resemble a wraithlike mere shadow of his former mere shadow, was pink in the face and light on his feet, head thrown back with laughter every time I glanced his way.
It was pure carnival as the high-desert night came on, the sizzle and spark of Eros ignited by the Promethean gift of Thanatos we had just bestowed to all the world beyond our gates.
And I was undoubtedly the calmest man for miles around.
Never doubt that I toasted and boasted with the rest of the fellows, the very picture of a hail fellow well met. But I savored the knowledge of how vastly my evening’s denouement would eclipse our communal high spirits, in the afterglow of Trinity’s climax.
My pleasure lacked but one ingredient to ring down the curtain: Feynman himself.
Pretending to swig from yet another proffered fifth of rationed rotgut, I spotted my prey at long last.
He sat cross-legged on the hood of a jeep, pounding away on his bongo drums like a cheap wind-up tin monkey. I shuddered when I drew close enough to realize he was shoeless, the soles of his feet encrusted with filth.
“A good evening to you, sir!” I cried out, giving him the benefit of my broadest grin.
He turned toward me, the rictus of his own smile rendered even more sinister by the nearest bonfire’s shifting flames.
“Thirsty!” Feynman’s bongo-playing ceased. “That was something today, huh?”
“It certainly was something, all right!” I nodded in idiotic concurrence. “It certainly was!”
“Want a drink?” Feynman produced a steel flask from some unseen pocket.
“Damn right I do, pal.” I reached for it and unscrewed the cap.
I put the neck to my lips and tilted my head back, taking a real gulp to put him at ease. The harsh liquor made me cough and sputter.
“Not the quality you’re used to, I suppose,” he said, lifting a pinky finger while pretending to sip daintily from an invisible cup of tea.
“Whatever the hell you poured into this thing,” I replied, handing it back, “tastes like God’s own liquefied shit.”
My unexpected profanity made him guffaw.
I could tell, then, just how very drunk he was, and I was ready to take my chance.
Turning the flask upside down, I poured the rest of his revolting lighter fluid onto the hard-packed ground.
“Just a cotton-picking minute, there!” Feynman leaped down off the jeep, lurching to grab at his now-emptied vessel.
“You don’t need to drink this crap, old pal,” I said, presenting it to him with a grand flourish. I threw an arm across his upper back. “I’ve got something far more special to share with you. Been saving it up for just such a celebratory occasion...”
The vile little troll had the audacity to wink at me. “You don’t say!”
“Shhh! Mum’s the word...” I leaned in, my lips close to his ear. “You were my partner in crime today. Let’s down the reward all by our lonesomes.”
He laughed again, leaning into my armpit. “Guess you’re earning that nickname, Thirsty.”
“Well, what the hell, Dick. We both know you’ve been the real genius of this entire operation from the get-go...”
The man literally giggled, emitting the sort of high-pitched, grating feminine squeals I hadn’t heard since being forced to attend dancing school as a child.
I rapped a knuckle gently against the side of his forehead. “If this old noggin doesn’t deserve to be toasted with the finest of seventy-five-year-old whiskeys,” I whispered, “well, then, I don’t know what does, after today’s performance!”
I had him hooked then, reeling him in with the sort of finesse I usually reserved for killing large salmon on Restigouche River.
He growled into my ear, wetting it with flecks of spittle, “Got a bottle hidden under your bunk?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, old man!” I whispered back, gesturing at the crowds around us with my free arm. “Leave my cask of grandfather’s single malt within reach of this pack of thieves?”
“Cask?”
“I’m sure you’ve seen one in the funny papers,” I said. “A little wooden barrel, the equivalent of six bottles, and all for us!”
“Lead on, Mac... Duffy.” Feynman belched, tugging at my sleeve.
I decided to return his wink, with interest. “At your service, mon frère.”
I switched a dim flashlight on, once we were beyond the sightline of our fellow revelers. By this point I knew I could count on Feynman’s inebriation to get him good and lost in the dark as I circled and wove the pair of us around endless spindly pines and piles of rock.
In the utter boredom we’d all endured during our spare moments, nearly every one of us had explored the old Indian caves surrounding our workaday environs.
The cave I’d chosen was a small one, of very little interest.
For my purposes, it had the advantage of a shallow alcove to the rear, just out of sight of the main entrance. Most grown men could only just squeeze into this through a narrow split in the rock. There was no true egress out the back wall — just a far skinnier crack that only the most malnourished of children might have wriggled through, though it did allow a slight zephyr to blow in, occasionally, from beyond the cave itself.
I desired that Feynman should die, but would never voluntarily grant him the satisfaction of rapid suffocation.
When he began to complain of the distance we’d traveled, I produced a flask of my own. It was filled to the brim with a pint of the same fine Scotch whiskey I’d promised him.
He took a gulp and mellowed considerably.
I patted him on the back. “Good, isn’t it?”
Feynman raised the flask toward me. “Here’s to your generosity, old pal,” he said, before taking another hearty swig.
I took it to raise toward him in turn. “And to your long life, my friend.”
“The hell are we?”
“Almost there.” I handed the flask back. “Drink up.”
He laughed, taking my direction to heart.
“Lots more where that came from,” I assured him. “And we’re so very close...”
I left the flask with him, knowing he’d drink himself even more insensible.
“Ah!” I cried. “We’ve reached the promised land!”
I played the flashlight quickly across the cave’s entrance, then bowed him inside.